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theodp writes "Steve Jobs & Co. put the kibosh on easier cellphone development, but Google is giving it a shot. The NY Times reports that Google is bringing Android software development to the masses, offering a software tool starting Monday that's intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android phones. The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android, has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not CS majors. The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves. It's something Apple should be taking very seriously, advises TechCrunch."

If this means the android market is gonna be filled up with apps made by toddlers and high-school girls.

Seriously though, props to google for making android development even more accesible, i just hope this doesnt result in milions upon milions of fart-apps and such, their largely unmoderated app-store is one of the reasons i want an android phone instead of an iphone, but this might become a tad painfull is left unchecked

I don't think I understand you correctly: nobody forces you to install those millions of fart-apps! If they find their audience among the teens, why not? Do you really notice that the whole web is literally overwhelmed by pages of similar (i.e. non-existent) quality?
The problem is not that Android Market will be flooded by low-quality apps. The problem is that Android Market has pretty rudimentary app search and filtering capabilities to reduce signal to noise ratio. Sorry for the irony, but Google must build a decent search engine for Android apps.

i'll just reply to you, since many others have already replied to me saying search etc..

I dont care if people want fart apps, or even milions of them, but if, when browsing an app-store, i end up wading through thousands of pieces of junk to find one or two actually good apps, that is annoying. I find this already happens a lot on the apple app-store, the mechanisms for searching etc. simply arent 'fast' enough for my taste, i spend too much time scrolling or whatever.

truth be told, i am very curious about android and the android market, i have no doubt that as soon as my contract is up for renewal i'll get a nice android phone

It's not that different from the Appstore on the iPhone, I'm sure most of those apps are junk as well. People tend to browse the most recent and popular lists primarily to find things. As that'll find most of the good ones, also if one has a specific need in mind, Google helps with that as well.

Ok. You want an easy way to find good quality apps.Apple does that by restricting production. It might work.Google should do that by smart ranking, even if they are not doing it well now, more apps doesn't mean it's going to be worse. In fact, Google is good at finding the good stuff in a sea of crap. A larger volume of data might be of help.

This seemed to be the most lacking area of the Android to me - given Google's search pedigree I was expecting all kinds of clever filters to help me find the right apps. In the end I decided it was easier to just use app review websites and forums to find the best apps, and to be honest it's not a major issue, just a little confusing it doesn't do this amazingly well right out of the box.

Apple tries to ensure a little bit of quality mainly by charging developers to put their app in the app store. The review process screens out some, but mostly for other purposes. $100 a year discourages an immense amount of crap - just like spam would be reduced if there was some significant cost to send an e-mail.

The Android market requires a one-time $25 registration fee, so the difference isn't really that big.

Average people have never wanted to write their own programs for any other "computer they depend on." Why would a phone be different?

Disagree. Microsoft Access, Word, and Excel all offer programmability for the average people. And there sure are people using that programmability, and even depending on the resulting software. (Yeah, they all are bad for large programs, but this is not about large programs.) As long as the sandbox is solid enough, I don't see a reason to discourage people from writing their own programs for their phone.

It's much easier to find apps using one of the app review websites than it is to use either Google's market or Apple's app store. Android makes this nice and simple with Google Goggles integration, so you find the app you want, snap a shot of its barcode with the phone camera and it will do the donkey work of finding the app. Alternatively you can use something like App Brain, where (I believe this is how it works, not used it myself) you have a login and you select the apps on your pc and your phone will j

if, when browsing an app-store, i end up wading through thousands of pieces of junk to find one or two actually good apps, that is annoying.

This is already the case on Android (no idea about AppStore, but I've heard that it's not really very different despite the "walled garden"). When browsing practically any store category, about 50% is porn, 30% are themes, wallpapers and ringtones, 15% are crappy apps doing something that has been done thousand times before (and doing it badly), and 5% is something that might actually be useful - and I'm probably being overly optimistic here.

What they probably need is a better voting system that properly ranks applications. If people is looking for the "best farting-sounds application" that what should be returned based on people's experiences and application ranking. It's not like Google doesn't know how to do search and ranking.

Ranking at the moment seems to be skewed anyway, on the one hand by all the people spamming their websites (who just automatically give 5 stars to every single app, presumably because if the app ranks well there's more chance you'll see their spam in the comments) and on the other hand people who fail to read the disclaimers such as "this app doesn't work on handset X for hardware reasons Y and Z" but they still give it one star because they have handset X (like buying a Windows PC and complaining it won't

What's more is that this application will bring programming "back" the the masses.

I'm a (former) high school teacher myself, and I'm getting near jitters thinking about how fired up my kids would get if they could program their own mobile phone app with the same ease of making a Powerpoint Presentation (younger students *LOVE* making powerpoint, quite often "reward time" would be "if you're all good, I'll let you make a powerpoint about whatever you want")

Think about how amazing it would be to teach a whole year class about creating an App for your phone. "Think of a problem that needs solving" - what buttons do you need? what do the buttons have to do? now draw the screens on paper, now draw the buttons in the interface... now here's how we add "actions" to the buttons.

Want to do something that's more complex? Maybe we need to look "behind the design, at the code"

How many people here grew up on the Apple ][ or on BASIC programs for the C64?

If this means the android market is gonna be filled up with apps made by toddlers and high-school girls.

The market is already filled up with piece of crap apps [androidzoom.com]. It's just that you never see them until they become popular on the marketplace. If the majority is only using the top 1% of applications on both Android Market and Apple App Store, does it matter that at the very bottom there are spam apps made by high-school girls or not?

i just hope this doesnt result in milions upon milions of fart-apps and such, their largely unmoderated app-store is one of the reasons i want an android phone instead of an iphone, but this might become a tad painfull is left unchecked

If some people want the fart apps, let them have their fart apps. Just don't spend money on fart apps and you'll be okay. Android Market has reviews and popularity... how in the

Android Market has reviews and popularity... how in the hell is that "unmoderated"?

From what i understand, apple does remove some total crapware once in a while from the app-store, including all those "bikini girl pictures FREE" apps which just clog up the pipes for no added value what so ever, i thought the android marketplace is completely open to any and all apps. As much as i hate apple for their approval policies, some level of QA is probably a plus (and apple is taking it way to far)

As much as i hate apple for their approval policies, some level of QA is probably a plus (and apple is taking it way to far)

The approval process is not so much about QA as it is about making sure your app doesn't compete with Apple's. Yes, they do check to make sure you're not using any undocumented APIs and that the app doesn't blatantly crash, but there is some real trash out there. They'll gladly let anything through, no matter how useless, including those that make a mockery of their own HIG.

I wouldn't mind so much if Google gave me some tools and expected me to do a little work to get the apps I want. What I'd like to see are advanced search filters (date, downloads, rating, file size, maybe the stats for percentage of people who uninstalled the app - I'm sure they have those available) with the ability to save searchs and, perhaps just as importantly, the ability to block certain users or keyword matches (it seems 90% of the spam crap in the market place originate from a relatively small set

But what if I want "bikini girl pictures FREE" apps anyway? As long as they're not spyware or malicious, I don't see why *any* app should be kept out. Find ways for the cream to rise to the top, but don't necessarily keep anything out.

There was a story the other day stating that Google intend to allow you to sign in to a desktop (presumably web) based version of the marketplace to remotely install apps on - kind of like you can use iTunes to install apps on your iPhone I guess.

I wouldn't be suprised if Google revamps the marketplace on the phone somewhat at the same time to be honest. It does seem to work quite well as high rated stuff tends to remain at the top and lower rated sinks to the bottom, but I agree, in the long run there will

Well that's about the state of the Android market right now, but hopefully it will mean people with great ideas but limited technical knowledge will be able to contribute. I've pretty much accepted that if I want to find decent apps, the best bet is not to go via the market place but to use app review sites (and at least they mostly make this very painless by allowing me to snap a photo of the barcode and instantly locate the app).

It is like Slashdot. If you want to look at everything at -1 you can. Naturally you will see a bunch of crap.

For android applications you can always sort things by how popular they are and find the creme of the crop.

Who knows, you may be surprised by what application may be developed by a high school girl. To ignore the potential creativity of a vast swath of society is foolish. Maybe the killer app is one that targets high school girls.

Who knows, you may be surprised by what application may be developed by a high school girl.

My guess is: The same as operas written by computer geeks.

No, I don't mean the browser.

The basis of society as we know it is division of labour. Let people do what they are good at, and give the parts they aren't to someone else. We don't need 5 million nonsensical crap applications on the marketplace. What we need is a way to request applications. If 1000 people want a fart app and are willing to pay $0.99 for it, I'm sure someone will write one.

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for. Back when we came up with all this Internet thing, wasn't the fact that it makes bi-directional communication possible one of its best features? Instead of having only the big corporations being able to talk to the costumers via advertisement and press releases, the customer could talk back and the companies would listen?

Whatever happened to that? Wouldn't the app market with its thousands of small developers a fantastic place for this old dream? Tell them what you need, or what the available apps are lacking, and the chances that someone will set out to satisfy that need are better than ever before.

That would be a true innovation that drives the app store or marketplace or whatever you want to call it forward. Apple is too much into the uni-directional conversation for that to happen, Google could make it happen. Don't tell me that with all the very smart people they employ, nobody has dug up this idea from the 90s.

I would argue that a developer is more likely to "get" your App needs from a bodged prototype created on this platform, than the usual arm-waving and vague specifications.

Furthermore, while it's wonderful to imagine the millions of hobby programmers jumping at the chance to develop my concept for a program that automatically locates waffle houses by GPS and texts my friends if I enter them, I think it's a fantasy. The mismatch between my enthusiasm for the project and the sheer tedium that would lie in codi

The mismatch between my enthusiasm for the project and the sheer tedium that would lie in coding it could only be realigned with hard cash I don't have.

No, but it may be worth $0.99 to you. And to a hundred other people. Or a thousand. If there are enough people that want it done, it will get done. Someone's gonna say "that's an easy $999, let's go coding".

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for...Instead of having only the big corporations being able to talk to the costumers via advertisement and press releases, the customer could talk back and the companies would listen?
Whatever happened to that?

It's called the market - the way the customers "talk back" to the producers is by choosing which products to buy (or not to buy); the feedback is pretty quick and much better than any other process that I can thing

You can't have a lot of kids knowing how to program tomorrow if you don't spark their interest with such a tool today. And IMO this will be great not only for attracting and educating future software engineers, but also to tap into the pool of active talented kids who are not going to be software engineers, ever. The kids who will be nuclear physicists, radio geeks, astronomy fans, journalists will also acquire basic programming abilities without distracting from their main specialty to learn a programming language or two, dive into a complex SDK and constantly work to keep these skills up to date.
In short, I think that App Inventor is pretty awesome.

You might think that's the best way to determine what apps should be created, but in practice what people say they want is hardly ever exactly what they do want. If you follow that route you quickly end up with "The Homer" - the everyman car that looks like a monstrosity and costs a fortune because it tries to be everything to everyone. If this tool makes it easy for regular people to prototype ideas quickly and test them in the wild, that's probably not a bad thing. Even if 99% of it is garbage. The 1% can always be polished by developers later if it takes off.

People who are good at programming have already crossed the barrier, they don't need them lowered.

This is specifically for people who are not good at programming, and have no desire to spend the effort to learn it (i.e. "cross the barrier").

Taking domain knowledge and turning it into something useful has been a big hype of AI research for 30 years or so. Turns out that it's a lot harder than most people think, because domain knowledge is worthless if you can not express it in a form that makes it c

This reminds me of the early 1990s trend of "programming for everyone", particularly Macromedia's Lingo in Director. Languages and environments that start this way quickly realize that the end products would be ever so slightly more appealing if they were more flexible. And flexibility is the end of simplicity. The 1.0 of this language is going to be fine for a few intrepid schoolgirls, but soon they're going to have to add basic programming concepts and structures which will leave most people scratching their heads. Haven't we already seen this dramatic arc with Director and Flash?

No, dead [ytmnd.com] is correct. However, the robot's name is Linguo [wikia.com], not Lingo. So get out! You're banned from making corrective posts on Slashdot! You, and your children, and your children's children -- for three months.

The thing about Flash though is there are some people who have stuck with it and made some really cool tools/products/games with it (everything from C64 [codeazur.com.br] emulators to word processors [adobe.com] not to mention tons of games - some of which are quite complex) using a serious dev toolkit like Flash Builder.

Hopefully this kind of tool inspires someone to dig deeper and pick something up something a bit deeper like the Android SDK

This is what is great about Google they offer different services to compete with Apple. Plus the whole point of creating your own apps made easy is just really cool and a great touch by Google. I think if this catches on this could be a big selling point for Google.

Do you really think that one, even just one application of quality or merit will be created with this? There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps. Aside from that?

We've been there. Visual programming had its place, back when it was done by nerds. There were games, serious applications, the whole nine yards. Turns it it's all shit. Beyond trivialities, you can't model anything worth writing a program for with boxes. Even Minesweeper is too complicated fo

>There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps. Aside from that?

That's what they said about html because of its simplicity, but it turns out that most people's needs aren't met by commecial software and need something that's just not worth paying someone to develop.

There's always going to be a need for simple apps. I don't see this than being any different than VBA for apps or building front-ends in Access. Non-coders can learn these things, build prototypes or even little production apps, and be better off for it. I think it would be foolish to let Apple or WinMo take the lead in simple app development because it has the potential to be a big deal. I'm pleased to see that not only is Google not emulating Apple's lock down/walled garden approach, they are also promoting simplified development to end users!

HTML is not a general-purpose programming language. It is a markup language. Not a big surprise that you have visual tools for markup, is it?

Access is actually a great example. All of the "production" apps I have seen that were made with Access are horribly shoddy buckets of crap that if you'd written them for a client you'd be sued into bancruptcy for. When it's made in-house, for some reason it becomes acceptable, maybe because some twit in management did it himself...

I think that's GP's point - it doesn't matter that the app, website, whatever, isn't the holy grail to everyone. It doesn't matter if it's the holy grail to a significant minority. In some cases, if only a handful of people find it useful, then that's enough. If it was a professionally developed app or site, it would be seen as a failure, but the very fact that it cost someone nothing but their spare time and has helped a bunch of other people is a net gain. It's never going to set the world alight, but by

Actually, you'd be surprised what get's done in the building controls world with blocks and lines.

Yes, but that is a dedicated setting. You're not doing general-purpose coding, are you? I'm not an expert, but AFAIK that is more comparable to editing a configuration file or a database than with programming.

Citation needed. All I see in the text itself is "do not eat of the tree". The common identification as an apple arises from a Latin pun [wikipedia.org] between malus meaning apple and malum meaning evil.

I took a look at the demostration videos and whatnot, and the user interface seems to be a cross between XCode's interface builder and MIT's Scratch. The code is written by dragging "puzzle pieces" into place, just like in Scratch. However, I assume this uses Java rather than Squeak? Scratch is kind of a lot different than HyperCard, but, you know... whatever. If only my BlackBerry Storm hadn't turned me off smartphones forever, I might actually be inclined to give this a shot.

I don't have enough of a reasonable need for smartphones anyway, even if they are good. I already saw Airbender, and honestly it was perhaps the least shitty movie Shamalamadingdong has made so far, even though it was a rather poor adaptation of the cartoon.

A simple App maker like hypercard was? It is supported on Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu. It also works with both Java 1.5 and 1.6. Way to go Google! You may have finally hit upon a great way to outcompete Apple in the mobile space. I just hope you're working on improving the Android Market in a big hurry.

... is the fact, that the guy behind this project is Harold Abelson, author of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs! He described LISP "picture language" in the book as a useful learning concept. He also "...directed the first implementation of LOGO for the Apple II" which seems interesting in this case.

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5. They actually have an already existing tool separate from XCode, that lets you pretty easily design a nice UI in HTML5 - it's called Dashcode.

It does require you install the developer tools (which are free).

That said I applaud Google for this effort, perhaps it could become a new standard for introductory programming classes in gradeschool/highschool.

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5.

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason. But, just as importantly, I cannot imagine a single advantage to them foregoing having that application exclusive to the App Store and available to any device with an HTML5-compliant browser. Simplified development does not imply useless output applications, so why would they w

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5.

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason.

Developer licensing and sales of Macs to developers that don't have them don't even show up in Apple's bottom line in any meaningful way. Sales of iPhones, however, are a huge part of their profit. Apple is about making money, but they're not idiots that want to nickel and dime people in ways that will lose them larger amounts of money in the long run.

But, just as importantly, I cannot imagine a single advantage to them foregoing having that application exclusive to the App Store and available to any device with an HTML5-compliant browser. Simplified development does not imply useless output applications, so why would they want to push any useful but simple tool to being available on any other device?

Apple makes a lot of money selling Macs as well as phones. By promoting HTML5 (which you can compile into an app in the iPhone store, by the way) they push We

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason.

Here's two reasons. One, your $99 isn't worth having to deal with even more really bad apps by anybody. They want a bit higher bar to submit apps just to make sure it is worth their while to do so. Two, for the same reason they tried to convince everybody there was no need for an SD

Ironic, it was the internet browser which killed the original HyperCard. The browser was more general and portable than HyperCard. Required browser updates include:
(1) Use all the new GUI features on smartphones like location info, touch screens, etc.
(2) Make better use of small screen real estate. The default should drop window borders and menu borders, etc.

Its a step backwards from the generality of a browser to have to write a custom App for everything.

This is not for making apps to distribute in the marketplace, this is about quickly making apps for YOU to use. Not that Android development is hard for people who understand even basic coding, but this will let more people making things to run on their phones. The demo video is a woman making an app with a picture of a cat that meows when you touch it. This is for HER to use, not to be distributed to the masses.

This is a situation where, I suspect, Apple will not follow unless placed under real pressure.

Look at Apple's release model, particularly for iDevice stuff, it is the very opposite of "early and often". They are totally willing to take flack(cut and paste, MMS, multitasking, etc.) for as long as necessary in the service of delivering what they consider to be the "right" solution. Obviously, they do do iterated development as well(just ask anybody who had to endure OSX before about 10.3...); but Apple, in the present day, has a strong bias against "good enough and a lot faster/cheaper" type stuff.

Releasing an environment explicitly designed to lower the barrier to entry for application creation would have an effect precisely contrary to Apple's design aesthetic and integration philosophy. Consider the analogy of MS Access in the context of Win32 desktop software. On the one hand, the existence of that application is probably responsible for the existence of more utterly rubbish "applications" than just about anything else on earth. On the other hand, it has allowed millions of people who are basically nonprogrammers to hack together "good enough" applications to solve the weird little application-specific problems that are important to them or their business, and which are too small to pay for a real developer.

Google's "App Inventor" will very likely have similar results: large numbers of people who would otherwise be unable to create any software will create bad software that is "good enough" because, while bad, it is precisely tailored to problems that they care about. Apple could, in all likelihood, create such a system if they were so inclined; but there are two reasons to suspect that they won't(again, unless they find themselves under really heavy competitive pressure, which they haven't yet. Android has grown phenomenally; but mostly by sniping geeks, eating the WinMo and legacy-Palm markets, and pretty much crushing the "high end dumbphone", not by cutting the iPhone user base): One, Apple currently has the substantial majority of 3rd party developers, and many of the ones considered to be doing the best work. Two, "good enough" makes Steve cry, and the programs that will come out of any bar-lowering super-simple application development environment will just ooze "good enough" from every pore...

You don't seriously think Apple held back 3G, a half-decent camera, etc., simply because they wanted to do it "right"? Apple will hold back on basic features because then they can get their users to buy the same product again in 12 months. There's nothing more to it.

The two strategies are not mutually exclusive, and I think that it is fair to say that they engage in both.

Because hardware cannot be patched, any feature delay(whether a legitimate delay caused by having a fairly small engineering team, or an instance of cynical milking) tends to look and feel like milking, and have similar economic consequences.

With software, it is harder to argue that there is a cynical economic strategy at work; because (with iPhones) software upgrades are not paid for, so the delay has no profit, only a PR cost. They might make a few bucks off the iPod Touch users; but I'd be shocked if the money made by nickel and diming them is worth a delay that might reduce the number of comparatively high-roller iPhone users they have raked in and locked into contract at a given time. The only aspect of their software strategy that is arguably "milking" is tying relatively trivial features of their OS bundled applications to OSX upgrades, in order to encourage people who don't care about APIs, or wouldn't know one if it bit them in the ass, to update anyway.

Since Apple is notorious for forcing old hardware into obsolescence (not so much their phones as their computers: it's not like HTC isn't worse), I'm not going to give them the benefit of doubt, which is something you seem to be going out of your way to do. No, the piss poor camera in the first generations were not due to a "small engineering team"; a camera is a commodity. 3G, likewise. It's only now that the competition has caught up with it in usability that the iPhone is starting to compete in hardware

I wouldn't touch Apple's gilded cage with a 10 foot pole(unless someone for whom it isn't 'just working' pays me enough to touch it for them); but my impression of their strategy is that it is a mixture of cynical customer milking(you don't get margins like theirs otherwise) and a certain flavor of engineering perfectionism(which, on the one hand, is largely what allows them to get away with the first part; but can also bite them in the margins and the customer satisfaction: consider all the Time Capsules t

Yes, I'm serious, and no, the G4 iMac wasn't released in '96 -- in fact, the first iMac (G3) was introduced in 1998, whose latest supported OS was Panther (2003). Oh, and the latest supported OS for the original G4 iMac was 10.4.11. Don't bother much with facts, do you?

you think many everyday people creating a pet the kitty app are gonna sign up as a developer and submit their app to the app store? i doubt that. it would actually be good to have a separate app store for this so people know they are limited apps, but it gets people interested in the process and friends and family can download the app.

I will debate the "not cutting in to Apple's iPhone user base" statement.

I know of three different "non-geeks" who had second and third generation iPhones who have switched to Android handsets. Two have switched to the Sprint EVO, one to a Verizon Droid handset (I don't remember which) in the last 30 days.

In all three cases, the reasons were simple. Their contracts with AT&T were up, and they were irritated at AT&T's issues so they went looking. In all three cases, they found features present in

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I think lowering the barrier for entry for app building is a step toward my personal vision of utopia. "solve[ing] the weird little application-specific problems that are important to them or their business, and which are too small to pay for a real developer" is exactly how you end up with the most diverse software environment possible, and get the really inventive, out-of-left-field creatives to participate.

A higher barrier for entry certainly has not prevented the deluge of "iFart" apps.

Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements. Clicking the wrong mouse button i

Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.

So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2? Hell, even first graders can do that...ever see the "what's different" challenges in Highlights [highlights.com]? Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.

You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems, you can call it whatever you like....but people can differentiate between a gas and a brake pedal. They should do the same between a left and a right mouse button.

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source? If anything, it would make things WORSE. You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions. So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier? They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?

Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base. Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed for a single mouse-button....the problem is that tablets have no buttons. That takes time to perfect and for people to get used to. Nothing more.

So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2?

Maybe you don't understand what usability is. It's making tasks as easy and efficient as possible. For the most part, two button mice are wasted because the interfaces are designed by someone who does not know what the user's tasks are. For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse. I'm using one right now. But instead of a developer who does not know my workflow choosing what two of those buttons do, and me getting to program one of them in a customized way, I get two to customize and one is preprogrammed. That also means no functionality is "hidden" in a context menu. All of it is accessible from the regular menus, which means if a person with a mouth controlled joystick needs to use the software, they can actually get to everything.

Simple DEFAULTS don't dumb down an interface. They make it usable.

Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.

In my experience that would be about 30% of users in a given day, including a network security expert that is running the show for one of the largest telecomm companies in the world and has an IQ, PhD's, and enough experience to make your resume look like crap. You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.

You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems...

I call that idiocy and ignoring problems and blaming users for shitty usability. That would make you the average programmer then... maybe even one at MS:)

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source?

Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?

You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions.

That's one option. It's called "chording". Another, more common, option is to make everything accessible without needing a second button. A third option, for more advanced users, is to add a device with multiple buttons, or enable those buttons when present in devices with a flexible number of buttons (ala magic mouse or whatever they call it).

So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier?

For some advanced options and shortcuts to actions, sure. For regular users, they should never need to use options only available there. It should strictly be for shortcuts, advanced options, and user programmable functions.

They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?

The point is, if you only have one button by default, they never have to because no programmer in their right mind puts functionality ONLY in that place, as programmers routinely do for right click menus.

Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base.

But you clearly haven't bothered to do any research on the topic. You just have an opinion formed out of your own emotional baggage and with no scientific basis or evidence.

Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed fo

For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse

One button mice are not so useful, but as you say, they can be replaced with n-button mice. One button trackpads, however, are the devil. They obviously can't be replaced, and many of us don't want to replace a trackpad with a mouse. I was in this situation with my first Powerbook, and I had to search out and install a semi-crappy third-party replacement trackpad driver to obtain right-clic

A zero button mouse would be great "if applications were designed for it". No mouse at all would be even better "if applications were designed for it". Then we would just have a keyboard, and we all know that a computer designed for use with no mouse and a keyboard is a massive step forward, right?

Just because something is simpler it doesn't mean it is more usable. And even if it COULD be more usable, it's reliant on a near mythical level of software interface design.

I grew up with two button mice. When the third button was added I thought it was the most useful development in the world- as did my far less computer savvy parents; it gave programs a whole extra layer of context commands to play with- and context specific controls are excellent. When that third button evolved into a wheel- bliss.

I now own, by user choice, a mouse with 8 buttons (L click, R click, wheel, back, forward, and buttons tied to a program selector and to mouse sensitivity controls). It's a little excessive for most users (I doubt most users have need for more than the first 5 in that list), but it illustrates a point of how complexity is not necessarily alien to usability.

You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.

Yes, a thousand times yes.

You know, sometimes I am looking for some spare keys. I often look in the wrong drawer first, before the right one.

This does not imply that a single drawer to hold everything is a more efficient solution.

Well, if high schoolers are anything like they were when I was one, boys are more likely to take to programming while girls are more likely to spend time using the phone. If the boys who already program want to get into cell phone development, its not going to be that much of a stretch, even without this tool. If they want to encourage girls who aren't already interested in programming but want to make their phone more "personal", then this is probably a good way to start. I doubt its some sort of sexist

Agreed, and it's all about perceptions as well. I knew plenty of guys at school who weren't into computers at all, but if you tell someone "this development kit makes it so easy, a teenage boy could use it" that's not a great endorsement, because the perception of most non-techies is that all teenage boys are "computer wizzkids". If you can say "look at what this group of teenage girls created", that takes the scary techie edge off (and I'm not suggesting that girls are any less competent here than boys, ju

Actually, it strikes me as a "DO WANT" for Steve Jobs. He's targeting the trendy and faddish types for uptake and then slides the products into the more common-tier placement. Nerds are hot his primary target (just a happy and useful coincidence in OS X).

Um, a lot of that is what people wanted. They didn't want to be told what they could and couldn't install. Hence you get a lot of junk, if you see something illegal you can flag it, but there isn't really a good compromise between open and highly manicured.

Keep in mind that among the flood of horrid homepages with purple backgrounds, jumping frogs, blinking stars and background MIDI tunes, there also emerged hundreds of thousands of highly valuable niche Web resources created by highly motivated nonprofessionals... and Google figured out a (community-powered) algorithm for finding the good stuff.

"high school girls" Why the fluck do they do this? Why pick "girls" or "boys" don't they think we can think?

It's not a matter of whether or not women can think. Rather it's about exploiting the social trends and biases that result on gender disparity in the programming industry. Today, a girl in high school is 5-10 times less likely to become a programmer than a boy in the same high school. When trying to develop a tool that caters to people with no inherent ability or experience, then, in makes sense to target girls in your study group, maybe not exclusively, but primarily. Recognizing the current trends in society and using them is not an endorsement of them, nor an implication that one gender is inherently less suited to a task. The arrangement of our society is the primary factor pushing various gender disparities in particular professions (in both directions).